As many of you know, there was an active CEN group dealing with the standardisation of a procedure to validate the use of IOMS (Instrumental Odour Monitoring System) for odour measurements. Still, after 20 meetings over six years, the group ended the time assigned without presenting a final draft standard for voting to the TC 264 "Air Quality".

   The good news is, however, that the CEN Technical Committee 264 on Air Quality has re-introduced a new Work Item (WI) on the agenda. This WI  re-starts the standard drafting process in WG 41 with a new fresh timeline. UNI (Italian National Standardisation body) is now responsible for continuing the work performed until now by the Dutch Standardization Body NEN.

   In a non-hazardous waste landfill an integrated odour monitoring system comprised with 2 IOMS, 2 H₂S continuous analyser and two automatic air samplers has been operating since 2018: automatic air samplers are activated when two consecutive measurements of 20 ppb at 5 min intervals are measured by H₂S continuous analyser or when overall odour emission measured by IOMS exceeded 500 ouE/m³ for more than 5 min.

   Problems with odour emissions were noticed in May-August 2019 with almost a daily automatic samplers’ activation, often correlated with complaints of population; moreover, monitoring campaigns of biogas from the landfill surface showed significant increase of surface emissions for certain zones, implying that surface and fugitive emissions form landfill biogas (LFG) collecting system could have been responsible for such odour emissions. The LFG wellfield system of is comprised of a network of 301 vertical wells in the landfill, coupled with conveyance piping for the transport of LFG to energy recovery and 3 blowerflare facilities.